Low-FODMAP black and white cookies with buckwheat and cocoa

Low-FODMAP black and white cookies in a chequerboard pattern: vanilla dough made with rice flour, cocoa dough made with buckwheat flour, sweetened with maple syrup. No wheat, spelt or honey; about 90 cookies.

At a glance

• Serves 15
• Prep time: 150 min
• Cooking time: 36 min
• Total time: 186 min
• Calories: 167 kcal per serving
• Protein: 3 g
• Fat: 9 g
• Carbs: 18 g

Ingredients

• 150g butter
• 90g maple syrup
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 pinch of salt
• 130g rice flour
• 30g cornflour
• 1 vanilla pod
• 130g buckwheat flour
• 15g cocoa powder
• 1 egg white

Method

You’ll need: oven · baking tray · chopping board · knife · mixing bowl

1. Beat the butter at room temperature with the maple syrup, egg yolks and salt until creamy, and divide the mixture evenly between two bowls.
2. Slit the vanilla pod open and scrape out the seeds. Knead the rice flour, cornflour and vanilla seeds into the first bowl, and the buckwheat flour and cocoa powder into the second.
3. Roll out each dough between baking paper into a sheet of about 25 x 10 cm and 1 cm thick, and put both in the fridge for 1 hour.
4. Cut the sheets into 1 cm wide strips and whisk the egg white. Lay three strips side by side, alternating, brush them thinly with egg white and stack two more layers on top, offset.
5. Build a second block from the remaining strips, wrap both in baking paper and chill for 45 min.
6. Preheat the oven to 175 °C (155 °C fan). Cut the blocks into 5 mm slices with a sharp knife and place them on lined baking trays.
7. Bake the cookies one tray at a time for 10–12 min at 175 °C until the vanilla dough just colours at the edges, then leave them to cool on the tray.

Good to know

With black and white cookies, the work only shows when you slice them. Here the dark dough gets buckwheat, which tastes nutty and full with the cocoa, while the light dough stays mild with vanilla. So the two doughs taste different too.

Swaps

Buckwheat flour → rice flour (milder; the pattern then comes from the cocoa alone). Vanilla pod → grated zest of 1 unwaxed orange in the vanilla dough. Cornflour → potato starch. Butter → ghee (almost lactose-free). All swaps stay low-FODMAP.

Cooking tips

Slice the blocks in one stroke with a dry knife so the pattern doesn’t smear. For spirals, roll out both doughs between baking paper to the same size, 3 mm thick, stick them together with a little egg white and roll them up using the paper.

Storage

Keeps for 3 weeks in a tin; the raw blocks keep for 3 months in the freezer.

Allergens

Contains milk (butter) and egg; no nuts and no ingredients containing gluten – with coeliac disease, use buckwheat flour labelled gluten-free. Suitable for children and during pregnancy; cocoa contains a little caffeine.

Frequently asked questions

Is buckwheat flour low-FODMAP?

Buckwheat flour is considered low-FODMAP in normal amounts, unlike wheat, spelt or rye. In this recipe every ingredient stays below the per-portion limits of our low-FODMAP rule, based on data from Monash University. What you tolerate is individual.

How do you make the chequerboard pattern for black and white cookies?

Cut both doughs into strips of the same thickness and stack them in three offset layers, brushing each layer with egg white. Sliced cold, the pattern stays sharp.